On 'Billions', a Showtime series, the Brian Connerty character has a meeting of the local go club in his office after hours. He explains to his boss, Chuck Rhoades ( a thoroughly twisted character brilliantly played by Paul Giamatti ) that it was his turn to host but his apartment is too small.Rhoades then offers unsolicited advice for Connerty's next play. ( "...block that monkey jump..." ) The camera hangs on the game long enough that we can see that it is indeed a reasonable game - not just some random placement of stones - and Rhoades' advice is probably correct.For the serious go player, a few second's inspection of the board reveals that it is the only move, and that Rhoades is telling Connerty something that he already knows.

Upon reflection, there are several things that lead me to think that the producers are tossing in a gratuitous go game just to advance public knowledge of go.1) The games does nothing to advance the plot. It does do some very, very minor character development - but the viewer already knows that Rhoades is an arrogant dick. That fact has been shown repeatedly in previous scenes. For the viewer who does not play go, the scene is a meaningless distraction.2) Connerty claims that he doesn't have room in his apartment. But his office is crowded also. He is the #2 attorney in the U.S. Attorney's office for the Southern District of New York, which suggests a low 6-figure salary. He can afford an apartment with some room - even at New York prices.

Upon reflection, there are several things that lead me to think that the producers are tossing in a gratuitous go game just to advance public knowledge of go.

I think one of the writers must play. Last season, the US Attorney referred to one of his strategic moves in the case as a "kakari". That allusion worked more effectively because (a.) the metaphor plausibly fit the situation and (b.) it make the US Attorney seem smart when the person on the other end of the conversation acknowledged that he had used the "esoteric" term correctly.

I guess it is possible that a little go research might have allowed someone with no knowledge of the game to write this. But it seems like a lot of trouble for something that had such limited use -- presumably they could have found another way to make him seem smart by mining another esoteric hobby that one of the writers was actually into.

Joaz Banbeck wrote:

Connerty claims that he doesn't have room in his apartment. But his office is crowded also. He is the #2 attorney in the U.S. Attorney's office for the Southern District of New York, which suggests a low 6-figure salary. He can afford an apartment with some room - even at New York prices.

The depends on where he lives. Here is the pay scale for AUSA's: https://www.justice.gov/usao/career-cen ... lan-charts. Top salary if I've got the right chart is 160k plus 30% for locality adjustment. That won't go very far house-wise if you want to live below 125th street in Manhattan. Don't get me wrong -- you can do it. I know plenty of people who make and live in very cramped apartments in "hot" neighborhoods.

The YouTube channel Second Thought released a video today about AI, mentioning AlphaGo at the beginning and then talking about it more in depth later on. They don't go into any real detail about how to play go, but AlphaGo and Deep Mind are featured in the video from 4:27 to 5:56. https://youtu.be/M_8nAmvqC4Q?t=4m27s

_________________"You have to walk before you can run. Black 1 was a walking move. I blushed inwardly to recall the ignorant thoughts that had gone through my mind before, when I had not realized the true worth of Black 1."-Kageyama Toshiro on proper moves

The YouTube channel Second Thought released a video today about AI [..]

<sigh> What happened to reading? I just wish people would also provide transcripts to such videos …

I am 1) hard of hearing, 2) can read much faster than people can talk, and 3) English is not my native language … this way I alway get the impression that for it is more important for some people to hear themselves blabbering than to convey their assumedly important message

I am 1) hard of hearing, 2) can read much faster than people can talk, and 3) English is not my native language … this way I alway get the impression that for it is more important for some people to hear themselves blabbering than to convey their assumedly important message

Here is the relevant part transcribed from the video:

Quote:

..Then there are groups like DeepMind, now owned by Google, who developed AlphaGo, the AI that defeated Lee Sedol, the best Go player in the world. The revolutionary thing about this particular AI is that the ancient Chinese game we call Go is much, much more complicated than something like chess. Deep Blue, the IBM computer that defeated chess master Garry Kasparov in 1997, was groundbreaking at the time because until that point, no computer had ever bested a human at chess.

However, Deep Blue isn't really all that impressive. Due to the limited number of possible moves in chess, it was able to brute force its way through the calculations to pick the best moves. Go, on the other hand, has a staggering number of possible moves, as many as there are atoms in the entire universe. Because of this huge number of possibilities, AlphaGo had to take a different approach. In contrast to Deep Blue or Watson, AlphaGo is classified as a general artificial intelligence, meaning it's not restricted to performing a specific set of tasks.

Simply put, if you provide a general purpose AI with a task its never encountered before and allow it to run overnight for example, when you check on it the next morning it will have mastered the task. Of course, the time requirement varies with the complexity of the task, but in the case of AlphaGo, DeepMind did exactly that with the game Space Invaders. No experience with the game, then the best in the world the following morning. These general purpose AI learn from their mistakes in successes and build new and improved versions of themselves.

Self-improving AI like AlphaGo are the harbingers of stronger AI to come. And with the rate at which they've improved even in the last few years, many industry leaders expect to see exponential growth within the next decade. The potential next step for AI is what many people are afraid of, including high-profile scientists and innovators like Stephen Hawking, Bill Gates, and Elon Musk. The looming possibility that holds such appeal in science fiction is the potential development of what's called Advanced General Intelligence, or AGI. The distinguishing factor with AGI is that it's not only able to perform routine calculations and learn by trial-and-error, but also exhibit the use of biological cognitive functions such as planning, using common sense, and making complicated decisions under uncertainty.

Like any other artificial intelligence, an AGI would begin as software on a computer. As robotic technology improved, we would begin to see tests like the ones in the 2014 film Ex-Machina. This is where the all-too-common fear of a robot uprising comes from. In fact, Elon Musk is an investor in Google DeepMind, just to keep an eye on things. While there are a few high-profile people advocating caution, others such as Kurzweil maintain that there's really nothing to fear. He predicts that while yes, we will reach a point at which machines will outpace humans in intelligence, what we should expect to see first is a sort of synthesis of man and machine.

He is not necessarily talking about cyborgs, but rather advancements in medicine and nanotechnology that will dramatically extend and improve human life. Kurzweil isn't alone in thinking this way. Elon Musk is currently working closely with a non-profit called OpenAI, which has the goal of merging humanity with machines. Musk suspects that such measures will protect humanity from becoming irrelevant in the face of super-intelligent computers. It sounds like science fiction, but we've already made great strides in using technology to augment people suffering from Parkinson's disease.

The next step according to Kurzweil is to connect the human brain directly to the cloud, removing the smart device as a middle man to the aggregate of human knowledge. Such a plan may seem far-fetched, but Kurzweil is quick to point out that predictions thirty years ago were thought to be ridiculous. But now that they've happened, it seems unthinkable that there was ever a time without cell phones, search engines, and the World Wide Web, all of which he predicted.

The current goal is to create AI-driven nano-bots that could be implanted in the human brain and would function just like a wireless car for your neocortex, the region of the brain associated with intelligence, the higher motions, and creativity. In Ray Kurzweil's words, "We are going to add additional layers of abstraction and create more profound means of expression, so we are going to be more musical, we are going to be funnier, we are going to be sexier, and be better at expressing more loving sentiments."

So, before we can expect a robot uprising, we can hopefully look forward to disease-fighting nano-bots and a direct link to all human knowledge right from our own brains. Not exactly cyborgs, more like Humanity 2.0. While there will no doubt be strong opposition to putting any kind of technology in our heads, many people eagerly await the day they can upgrade and be on the cutting edge of this unparalleled new era of technology. Once we've reached THAT point, then we can start worrying about the potential legal, ethical, and societal ramifications of humanoid robots.

"Tonari No Seki-kun (My Neighbor Seki) The Master of Killing Time" is an anime made up of five-minute short episodes. Yokoi is a girl who sits at the back of the class, next to a boy named Seki, who spends his time doing anything but studying...he builds elaborate domino arrays, enacts period dramas with shogi pieces, plays miniature golf on his desktop, etc. Episode 4 is called "Go"

Yokoi: I don't know how he can play in a serious setting like this. Go...something else that makes a lot of noise. Well, at least I don't know the rules, and I definitely don't know how the pieces battle each other, so maybe it won't bother me. I think I'll actually be able to listen in class today! Thank goodness!

Adventure Time - Five Short Tables (Season 7, Episode 35) shows Prince Gumball (the gender-swapped Princess Bubblegum) playing a Go-like game with Butterscotch Butler. The board and pieces look right, for a cartoon, but the rules seem a little different -- and in fact, the pieces, when stacked, apparently become sentient and can leave the game.

The short match ends with a nuclear tesuji, as it appears the butler is a stronger player.

it is entirely possible that it is a Gomoku game! It doesn't looks like a Go game for sure.I tried to understand if the two lonely stones on the corner area are maybe ladder breakers in a strange TsumeGo, but they are not.Galation

_________________When you play Weiqi you are joining millions of people across four thousand years of time. Jonathan Hop - So You Want to Play Go?

This particular audience had exactly 3 people:our party of 2, plus a person visiting from New York:while her daughter is working in Hollywood,she enjoys various indie movies: trying to learn something new and interesting.( In this case, Go and AI. )

Last night, while working, I watched, from the corner of my eye, an international news show on German TV (“Weltspiegel” — “World Mirror”), and one of the topics was the situation in Spain re: Cataluña, a Spanish professor of psychology was being interviewed when this suddenly caught my eye …

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I was, like, “WUT? This is a political reportage, what’s this to do with it?”

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I find it interesting how, after AlphaGo has helped move Our Game more into mainstream news, people find it “sexy” to adorn their products with “Go” images; no idea, though, whether the book ever actually mentions the game, and the board looks like the person who laid it out doesn’t understand Our Game. Well, maybe somebody wanted to show how little a chance of staying alive the black stones have? But a bad example board then because how should such a constellation appear in any normal game?Oh well, at least I can’t see any illegal positions here

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